


Consummate Performer

by TeaJay (LoreWren)



Series: Tales Cerulean [4]
Category: Exalted (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: 24/7, BDSM, Consent Negogiations, Demons, Depression, Domdrop, Dubious Consent, Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Internalized racism, Lintha (Exalted), M/M, Pirates, Pregnancy Scares, Relationship Upgrade, Self Harm, Sexy Nicknames, Sword & Song (setting), Trans Character, Trans Male Character, Tya (Exalted), Xenophilia, and the perils thereof, magical contraceptives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 14:35:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28726701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoreWren/pseuds/TeaJay
Summary: “Teller of Tales Cerulean. Do you know where you are.”“On your demon-cursed excuse for a ship, now let me go; I will not; I willnot.”Angry, frightened people will lash out with weapons they have to hand. In a situation I can control, I try to keep enemies merely frightened, and allies frightened or neither. Ceru was angry and scared, and against an opponent twice his size had chosen words.That understanding almost solved the twist in my gut when he looked at me for the first time this morning and spat, ‘demon-cursed.’
Relationships: Admiral Verithine/Teller of Tales Cerulean, Lintha/Human, Lintha/Mortal, OMC/OMC
Series: Tales Cerulean [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2097711
Kudos: 2





	Consummate Performer

**Author's Note:**

> See end notes for slightly spoilery content warnings.

Ceru was handsome enough that I allowed myself a moment to just watch his face relaxing into sleep. Small, but with some muscle on him now, and every now and then he could actually slip my hold when we wrestled.

His eyelids fluttered, as though fighting sleep. When he got like this, it was nearly impossible to figure out what language he was speaking, much less the words, but he might have been attempting the word, “master.”

I hummed deep in my chest in a way that had him curl his ear against my ribs. “Sleep.” 

After a sufficient indulgence of watching his face in the moonlight, I slept as well.

* * *

Come morning, I stretched out on the bed. Ceru had already risen, sitting on the corner and leaned over himself. Ah, and the bedside oil was out. I grinned. Apparently I hadn’t fucked him enough.

“Good morning to y— _Cerulean_!” That was not last night’s blood, and his motions were wrong for cleaning up his menses, all nails.

“Go _away._ ” He didn’t look up or stop. If he hadn’t spoken I would have wondered if he was seeing anything in front of him, and frankly I still wasn’t sure.

I took the hand he had been using to dig at himself, bracing for a blow, but all he did was change to the other hand, sobbing. When I had both, he bit me, then jerked back. His eyes wouldn’t focus. 

I gathered a breath. “Teller of Tales Cerulean. Do you know where you are.”

“On your demon-cursed excuse for a ship, now let me go; I will not; I _will not._ ”

Angry, frightened people will lash out with weapons they have to hand. In a situation I can control, I try to keep enemies merely frightened, and allies frightened or neither. Ceru was angry and scared, and against an opponent twice his size had chosen words.

That understanding almost solved the twist in my gut when he looked at me for the first time this morning and spat, ‘demon-cursed.’

“You will not what,” came out flatter than intended, but still even.

He shook himself, eyes closed. “I don’t care if you want one, you wouldn’t be the one carrying it around 10 months, I will jump ship and swim if I have to but I will _not_.”

He thought he was going to get pregnant. More, he thought I had tried to get him to say yes to that when he could barely string three words together. No wonder he hated me.

“Ceru,” I said, trying for quiet and calm and hoping he heard gentle. “You are not pregnant.” If I’d had any doubts, the way he’d jumped at “pregnant” answered them. “Look at me.” One agonizing hesitation later, he did. He still looked scared, but not angry. Just shaking with fear, and exhaustion, and the beginnings of hope. I set him on the bed, making sure I left him an exit if he needed to bolt.

“Lintha do not create progeny unless we will it. I didn’t. So, we won’t.” I considered, briefly, sharing the other piece of that, ‘I didn’t,’ the, ‘I never have.’ 

“That’s—that’s not—“ He wanted to believe me, my Ceru. But I saw him waiting for the lie. Because I was Lintha, or because I could leave if I did get a child on him, maybe. If someone else had made him scared sick like this, I’d kill them.

“Ask any member of the crew.” Terrible, I realized as soon as I said it. Anyone on my crew would lie for me. “Ask anyone who knows of Lintha, when we dock.”

Ceru shut his eyes and breathed through his nose. I knew that look and gave him room to reach the chamber pot before he was sick. 

I went to hold his hair, but it was still tied back. I settled for running hands along his back, at a loss for how to convince him. If he were Lintha, he might take an oath by our Mother, but he wasn’t, and he didn’t have any reason to know what it meant. I swore it anyway.

When he stopped heaving long enough to speak, he rasped, “What are you saying?”

I hadn’t been speaking any sea language he knew—I forgot, sometimes, that he had never seen Bluehaven. He’d spoken in Seatongue, so I answered in it: “I swear to the Great Mother. I did not.”

Slowly, very slowly, the shaking stopped. Just as I wondered if I should shift away, he leaned back against me. I swallowed. Had that worked, after all, or was he just resigned?

“Right.” 

I tested my luck, starting to put my arms around him, only turning it into an embrace when he pulled at them. He was even smaller than he normally was. “Right?” My voice came out cautious, hopeful. I was grateful for the privacy of my quarters; I couldn’t be like this in front of anyone else.

“Right.” He shivered. “I would still rather we not...do that...again.”

“Of course,” I said. I had no interest in taking anyone to my bed unwilling.

“Not—I mean—“ He tensed again. I wished he weren’t so scared, but I couldn’t blame him.

“We don’t need to do anything. We dock in two weeks. Short enough.”

“ _No_.”

I froze. I hoped he hadn’t actually meant it, about swimming. We were close enough to the coast for a Lintha to make it, but not him, and there weren’t any good choices of port, even if he wanted to demand a raft.

“I still want to try,” Ceru said, eyes still down but iron in his tone. “I just mean no sex where something goes in me like—“ He growled. “I do not want to have sex which includes something entering my vagina, even if I agree to it in the moment.”

The words rang in my head a moment before I could form a reply. “That’s all?”

Ceru smiled up at me like the sun. “That’s all.”

I granted myself a moment of just looking at his face. Then I looked at the rest of him. If he hadn’t needed a wash from the wounds he’d given himself, he certainly needed one after crying and vomiting.

He followed my eyes, taking in blood, vomit, mucous, semen, tears. “...ah.”

This wasn’t the time to figure out what we were to each other, but regardless, I was his captain. “Washing. And later, when we are both in decent clothes, some conversations about what we want.”

* * *

He took a bucket and a cloth to the corner of the ship where he’d slept his first few months aboard. His old hammock had never been taken down—a small enough space, near the ammunition, and frankly few of us could reach it. I took the choice of location for a request for privacy and left him to it. 

By the time he came back on deck, I was engaged in the running of the ship, and couldn’t seek him out even if I had thought it wise. Eventually I heard him, but I never caught sight of him for more than a flash, and that was its own answer. 

Ceru performed. He loved it, and was good at it, enough so that one could forget it was a performance, that you weren’t living it. Even just hearing him, I had the urge more than once to halt my rounds and find the end of the story. 

Half a truth. He was hurting. I wanted to help him. I had hurt him. I walked with that, like swimming hard against a riptide. He had hated me this morning. Did he hate me again? Had he jumped overboard, the way he’d threatened? I’d known a fair number of mortals who’d done as much, after lying with a Lintha, thinking themselves too ruined for anything else.

When I saw him next, in my bed, he was wearing a blue robe. My heart ached: I wished I’d never said a word about what colors he wore. Then I wouldn’t be wondering if he thought I would be a danger to him if he wore yellow. 

He was grinning. I knew we could fall into what was already a habit, wrestling until I pinned him, kissing him until he begged, fucking him until he screamed.

Ceru was a performer. In the way of such things, he was also a good liar. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if he knew what the truth was.

I pulled a chair and sat down, far enough to escape the temptation to believe him. “Ceru.”

The smile faltered. “Yes...sir?”

Exhausting. I had been a captain and an admiral for years, but suddenly the responsibility embodied in that ‘sir’ could have crushed me. “I think you have earned the right to use my name, Ceru.” I did not say, ‘please.’ I did not know, anymore, if he knew how to tell me no.

He shifted, sitting cross-legged instead of splaying himself distractingly. Almost too quiet to be heard: “Verithine.” He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry about this morning.”

I rested my eyes a moment, then looked at him. “Can you be specific.” I did not say, ‘This is my fault.’ I did not say, ‘I know now I asked too much.’

He fiddled with his hands as if he wanted to be tuning his lute. “I am sorry I did not trust you. And I am sorry you woke up to that…mess.”

I shook my head. “You panicked. Luna’s tits, I might do as much.”

Now Ceru just looked confused. “Is there something else?”

I leaned forward, elbow on my thigh and chin on my fist. I didn’t want to say it. “Ceru. This morning. Do you remember what you said?”

“I asked you to leave? I,” he swallowed. “I thought we’d…”

Acid built in my throat. “Am I waiting for you to realize that you don’t want to be on a ‘demon-cursed’ ship?”

Ceru froze. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Mm?” There he was. Terrified. Sensible enough, a human on a Lintha fleet. Men had been eaten alive for lesser errors.

“I—I mean, I was trying to hurt you, I didn’t—I don’t actually think that you’re—that you’re—“

“Demonspawn?” Plenty of ports you can’t go to, when you’re Lintha. More, if you don’t have the family carving out a place for you. Whatever we may have been in ages past, today I remembered that we were all of us were cursed, handed down from a small company set adrift at sea, eaters of brother- and sister-flesh.

Ceru covered his face and let out that half-growl he did when he couldn’t find a word. “Fuck.” I waited. “I’m sorry.” He looked at me, his guilt winning over his frustration. “I shouldn’t have said that. I wish I hadn’t.” He sighed. “You’re a person. Lintha are people. I know that.”

On the tip of my tongue was, ‘Do you? Or do you believe what we want you to?’ “And do you know you do not need to sleep with me? With any of us?”

He jumped. “Yes! Verithine, last night was—it didn’t go quite right, but it doesn’t mean I want to stop.”

“Have you always known?” I pressed. I needed to know if I’d raped him. Impossible to solve, but knowing was better than not.

“Yes.” He looked at me, to all appearances genuinely baffled. “...oh.” Ceru flushed deeply enough to see it under the brown of his skin and he stumbled off the bed. “Do you, um. Should I leave?”

I rubbed my face. He didn’t sound like he was scared. He didn’t sound like he was lying. But he wouldn’t, would he? “Ceru. Are you planning to stay?”

“...Not if you don’t want me to,” he said, utterly reasonably, responding only to the conversation going on outside my head.

“On the _ship,_ Ceru.” I flung an arm out before checking myself, remembering how violent that gesture can be to a person half my size. Luckily he seemed surprised, not scared. “You’ve been here a year. Do you want to stay?”

Ceru searched my face. “...I was asking if I should leave your quarters,” he said, “and you asked if I wanted to leave the ship. Why do I get the feeling these are the same question?”

I waited, willing him to believe. He flushed again. “Oh.”

The words behind my teeth were Lintha words, and the closest approximations I had seemed ridiculous to start saying now. ‘Beloved.’ ‘Partner.’ ‘Companion.’ “Ceru,” I said, for lack of anything better than the name he’d taken. 

My voice broke on it, and I coughed. Too long on the ship, not enough time in the water, not enough water drunk to counterbalance it. My skin itched, and my throat felt like paper.

Ceru held out a glass. I had barely noticed him move. When I sipped, I tasted water and fruit. He must have cut some up for the pitcher.

“I didn’t think that was an option,” he said, quiet like I had a hangover. “I don’t really remember the last time I thought about staying, um, anywhere.” He reached for me, stopped. “I.” Swallowed. “I like being here.” Looked at the glass, refilled it, looked back at me. “Um. If I—if I stay. Would anything have to change? Do you want me to stop flirting with other men, or, or move my clothes in here, or.”

“I had you suck a man’s dick yesterday,” I said absently. ‘If I stay,’ curled through me like the beginning of a blessing. 

“ _V_ _erithine_.” I snapped my focus back to him. He had sounded angry, but the bluster was thin right now, masking anxiety about as well as a paper lantern over flame.

I took a breath, let it out slow. “There are questions that we should have already covered, before we started having sex. What should I be listening for in the moment?”

Ceru furrowed his brow, tilting his head in a way he seemed to not notice made him look like prey. “You should listen to whether I say yes or no?”

I let my disbelief show on my face. “Ceru, you’ve never said no.”

“I’ve said no to Kartika, to Bethari—“

“To _me._ ”

“W—well. We’ve been. Compatible.” As I watched him, he actually squirmed, twisting the band of his robe between his hands. “I would tell you,” he said, quiet and firm.

“What would you say if you weren’t certain if I were ordering you as the ship’s bard or as my bitch?” I kept the words even, but he still looked like he considered dropping to his knees. Not that far to fall. 

“Does it matter?”

I rolled a noise of frustration in the back of my throat. “ _Yes_. The ship’s bard does not question his captain’s orders; it doesn’t matter if those orders make him uncomfortable. The bard does not have to like his orders; my bitch should _enjoy them_.”

Ceru looked up and swallowed. “Um. If you want me to focus on this conversation, I would find it easier if you stopped saying, ‘my bitch’.”

“You dislike it?”

“I am having absolutely the opposite problem, Verithine.”

I laughed, surprising myself. “As the ship’s bard or as my Ceru, then.”

Silence stretched for a few heartbeats, and he gave me a look. Whatever meaning was in it, I didn’t follow it. “Y—yeah. Yes.” He cleared his throat. “We could—I could call you Master for the one, Captain for the other? You correct me if I’m wrong?”

I felt like an idiot. “You haven’t been distinguishing.”

“I just said that.“

Responsibility, again, and all it entailed. It was no lighter, but it felt bearable, this time around. “Between the titles. You haven’t been distinguishing.”

Ceru blinked, shifted. “....I should have been.” 

“No. I thought you were.” 

Information clicking into place. “...and you mean something different when you call me your bitch and little bard.”

Ceru had not called himself my bitch in a while. I needed to fix that. “ ‘Little bard’ is for asking. The other is for telling.”

“A-ah.” He swallowed. Apparently Ceru was substantially easier to fluster in conversation than I’d noticed. Or maybe he wasn’t accustomed to discussing these things outside the moment. Humans often didn’t. “What’s for ordering?”

“If I need to use a name, ‘Ceru’. Usually the tone is enough.”

“Right. Right, yes. Okay.” A few of his braids had fallen out of the tie, and he shifted them out of his face. “We’re starting from different places. How is this supposed to work, in”—he paused and did not say ‘Bluehaven’—“wherever home was?”

“Supposed to?” I shrugged, feeling no great attachment to the sorts of marriage I’d fled in the first place. “Huge party, there’s a priest of Dukantha, ends with an orgy with all our spouses, if we have any. You shouldn’t have had sex with anyone without my permission. We shouldn’t have had sex before. And you should be pureblooded. And we should be trying for a minimum of two children.”

Ceru nodded slowly, clicking pieces into place. When he appeared to have digested most of that, I added, “Your clothes in here would certainly be more convenient, as long as you’re staying.”

Ceru chose his words. “When I asked how this was supposed to work, you mentioned a priest.” A pause, one that was probably intended to speak for itself. When it didn’t: “Did you just propose?”

I had to reach to remember that particular turn of phrase. Marriage. Such an odd notion, offering a marriage instead of negotiating one. Besides, we had already consummated it. “What would you expect to change, if I had?”

He straightened. “What would I expect? Or what would I want?”

There was my Ceru, iron and integrity. “Both.”

Bluntly: “I’m not sure what I would expect. I’d want to know that we were each other’s only spouses. I’d want to know that if one of us had to leave, we’d know when he was coming back. I’d want to know what the fleet was getting into.” Then, clearing his throat and going quiet. “I’d want to hear that you loved me.”

My ears twitched. I hoped he hadn’t put together that particular Lintha expression yet, the closest thing we do to blushing. “Ceru. I love you. Will you stay, please?”

He swallowed twice. “I. Would like that.” Two steps forward, enough to lay hands on my upper arms. Close enough to see his eyes caught the light, tears present but not falling, close enough to see the smile. His pupils almost looked normal, dilated in the starlight through the window. “We should still probably talk more about what we like, when we’re not in the middle of it.” 

“Yes.”

“It will take time. And I’ll mess up again, even if you don’t.”

Something that wasn’t quite a smile pulled at the side of my mouth. “I will.”

He reached for my face, framing it in his hands. “I love you too, Verithine.”

I did not expect the words to matter, but the knot in my gut loosened. My eyes shut. “Sleep here tonight?”

“Are you telling the ship’s bard or your bitch?” Ceru teased.

I cracked my eyes back open. “I am asking my partner.”

He kissed me, smiling against my mouth. “I’ll move my clothes in.”

**Author's Note:**

> Prior to this story, Ceru—a tya, and in his case essentially a trans man—consented to vaginal sex while in a foggy headspace (no drugs, just subspace). Upon realizing this is the case, Ceru has a panic attack and dissociates, including some self-harm and (outward-directed) violence.
> 
> Lintha haven’t gotten a 3e overhaul as of this writing, but for the purposes of this story they all have the Selective Conception merit.


End file.
